What do you get the couple that has everything? Well, an all expenses paid trip to the Maldives in one of those huts on stilts that look out into the ocean would be nice. Failing that though, a scotch egg making class is a good second best. This is what Dave’s sister got us for Christmas last year and at the end of May we got round to redeeming it.
Top Notch Scotch Egg company are located in a small but perfectly formed shop in West Pelton in Durham and as soon as you meet owner Gary, armed with his plethora of egg puns, you know you’re in for a fun afternoon.
Gary and his trusty sidekick Lisa first teach you how to peel a hardboiled egg properly, no spoilers here but needless to say it’s a bit of a gamer changer, and if I did anything kitchen related in our house would be a brand new life skill. Dave tells me though that it’s a technique he now uses almost on a daily basis. We also got a brief history of the scotch egg (where it originates from may surprise you) and a demonstration of how to make a scotch egg yourself.
Once that’s done, you’re able to start creating yourself including picking your ingredients in order to make two whole scotch eggs. I went for a pizza-based scotch egg with cheese pepperoni and tomato puree. And so overwhelmed with joy that they had a jar or marmite amongst their ingredients, a marmite and cheese scotch egg. Fun fact, they tried to make a marmite scotch egg to sell at food fayres, but no one was interested. They rebranded it as a pork pie scotch egg (as that’s essentially what adding marmite to the sausage meat makes it taste like) and it suddenly became a best seller. And you know what that proves? People who say they don’t like marmite are fickle AF.
I was a little worried the addition of marmite to my scotch egg would make the sausage meat too wet therefore not successfully encase the egg but with the help and advice from Lisa, got the ratios just right. Once my eggs were scotched they get hoyed in the fryer for cooking. Whilst that’s being done we were treated to some of the shops best sellers of both scotch eggs and cheese. The stand outs for me were for sure the Donner Kebab scotch egg and the sriracha cheese, so nice where they in fact, that we bought some to take home. Afterall, who knew what Dave’s mushroom and leak scotch egg was going to end up tasting like?!
Once you’re very suitably fed with all manner of scotch egg, cheese and chutney based nonsense, your eggs are done and after a quick weigh off to see who got there’s to the perfect weight of 200g each (ours were nowhere near) it’s time to bag up your goodies and head on home. Or in our case, to the pubs of Chester-le-Street.
It was a really fun way to spend a few hours on a Saturday afternoon It lasted about 2 hours and other than having to bring your own apron and spoon (all will be revealed) everything else is provided for you. You can book directly through their website, or keep an eye out on Groupon or Virgin Experiences where they always have offers on for the same thing. We have done a sausage making course up at Brocksbushes in Stocksfield and I actually think this was more fun.
Oh and my marmite and cheese scotch egg was incredible!
